Another thing about friendships is you have to be proactive. All the time you have to be calling, returning calls, planning encounters, considering the feelings of, and whatever-ing your friends. It’s a major pain. And if you’re out somewhere and you run into a friend, only it’s been a while, and you never returned those calls, forget it. It’s worse than starting from zero, especially if you can’t come up with an on-the-spot good excuse why you didn’t call back. (Note: “Didn’t feel like it” and “Had nothing really to say to you” are not on-the-spot good excuses. The truth is usually a bad idea here.*)

All the rules is another thing.

Here’s just one of the rules you have to try to understand: Say they invite you over to share a meal. You should bring something as a show of appreciation. So you ask them what you should bring. They tell you not to bring anything. You insist you should bring something. They say, no, no, they have too much food as it is.

So you bring nothing. Therefore, because you brought nothing, they will never ask you over again. The denial of the need for reciprocity is just as important as reciprocity itself.

Another one is figuring out which of the Earthlings of the other sex you can talk to at a party. You need a flowchart to keep that straight.

And without warning the rules can change. There was a time in my life here when I could sit on a couch and go poo. They even gave me special pants to wear for it. Now? Nope. Even your family might not forgive you for getting that one wrong. And I’m not even sure when the change took place. Just one day, they stopped putting the special pants on me and I was supposed to know.

Observer003 – Earthlings

*”Here” being this situation. Come to think of it though, this also applies to Earth in general.